To mark the occasion of our 100th episode, we have invited Maria Garcia, Senior Editor of the ARTery, WBUR’s arts and culture team, to be our special guest host. She interviews Anita Walker, Executive Director of Mass Cultural Council, who discusses her 13 years leading the agency, and what it looks like to eliminate mistrust between a funder and a field.

Anita Walker has served as Executive Director of the Mass Cultural Council since April, 2007. Walker is the Commonwealth’s highest ranking cultural official, overseeing a range of grant programs, services, and advocacy for the arts, humanities, and sciences in communities across Massachusetts.

Marquis Victor is the Founding Executive Director of Elevated Thought, a creative youth development nonprofit in Lawrence, MA. He believes that art is a form of liberation, and that young people – once they have access and exposure to art – are able to build a foundation of self, expand their minds and eyes to identify issues in their communities, and use art to surface creative solutions for those issues.

Luis Croquer is the Henry & Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator of the Rose Art Museum. He discusses how the inclusion of more art historians from diverse backgrounds is helping rewrite the stories of artists previously overlooked by collecting institutions. He says centering the work of these artists also complicates the whole idea of art history – what are movements, who are innovators, and who gets to decide?

Brandeis University named Luis A. Croquer as the Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose Art Museum, in July 2017. Previously, Croquer was Deputy Director of Exhibitions, Collections, and Programs at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle, and the Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.

Kate Gilbert, Executive Director of Now + There, says the most successful public art is trying to disrupt how we walk through and see the world. She discusses how her organization supports temporary work in Boston as a strategy for changing how public art gets made and is appreciated.

Kate Gilbert is on a mission to transform Boston into a public art city. As artist, curator, and cultural producer, Gilbert sees contemporary art as a catalyst for transformation. In 2015, she launched Now + There, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to delivering impactful, accessible, and temporary public artworks that challenge Bosto­n’s cultural identity by taking artistic risks and consistently producing compelling projects that engage the public.

Mandy Precious, Engagement and Learning Director at Theatre Royal Plymouth, shares how social prescription – prescribing the arts or arts activities over medication – has impacted their organization and their community. Through their Our Space program, adults with addiction, homelessness, and/or mental health issues come to see productions and make their own work.

Mandy Precious is the Director of Engagement and Learning at the Theatre Royal Plymouth, UK. Previously she was the CEO and Artistic Director of the largest Youth Theatre in England. She was a freelance theatre maker, writer and project manager for 18 years working with communities from all backgrounds. Her work focuses on applied and community theatre, co-creating work with groups least likely to engage but often with the most interesting stories to tell.